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"Electronic Arts (EA) and Amazon have been the targets of a justified online rebellion the last couple weeks. The impetus for the backlash is EA's use of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology in its game Spore. As of right now, the game has received 2,226 1-star reviews on Amazon -- more than we've ever seen before -- and they are primarily focused on EA's DRM system.

The BBC's iPlayer site has been a target of open source community ire since it started. Originally delivering content via Microsoft DRM-protected technologies, it was condemned by the FSF (among others) for dictating unfree technology choices on viewers.

"I just came back from Richard Stallman's lecture at the University of Auckland. I was surprised by the amazing interest in his talk, the lecture hall being entirely jam-packed full, people standing along the back and all the way out into the hallway. I was lucky to be there early enough to get one of the last few chairs..."

Recently there have been numerous discussions on software and media piracy, with a few people even saying that open source could be the solution to stopping software piracy... However, software piracy is one of open source's biggest enemies, and few people realize that.

"..RMS’s other mission here is to promote the Free Software Movement. The creator of the GPL...is at pains to correct misunderstandings of what the term free software means and to draw a distinction between it and the open source movement.

"I've published a second article for the Free Software Foundation about Apple's iPhone, looking at the measures Apple uses to control iPhone users and prevent developers from writing free software for the platform. It turns out that this is a good example of why updating the GPL was important, and why it's a good idea for developers to use the new version (GPLv3).

** iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones.
** iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

On Wednesday, Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced a bill that BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow described as making it "flatly illegal to break any kind of digital lock, or to violate terms in one of those absurd end-user license agreements that make you promise to agree to let the record industry kick your teeth in and drink all your beer, just for the dubious privilege of paying for a song at iTu